Experimental high-intensity three-photon entangled source

We experimentally realize a high-intensity three-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) entanglement source directly following the proposal by Rarity and Tapster [J. G. Rarity and P. R. Tapster, Phys. Rev. A 59, R35 (1999)]. The threefold coincidence rate can be more than 200 Hz with a fidelity of 0.811, and the intensity can be further improved with moderate fidelity degradation. The GHZ entanglement is characterized by testing the Bell-Mermin inequality and using an entanglement witness operator. To optimize the polarization-entangled source, we theoretically analyze the relationship between the mean photon number of the single-photon source and the probability of parametric down-conversion.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

How effectively does metamorphic testing alleviate the oracle problem?

In software testing, something which can verify the correctness of test case execution results is called an oracle. The oracle problem occurs when either an oracle does not exist, or exists but is too expensive to be used. Metamorphic testing is a testing approach which uses metamorphic relations, properties of the software under test represented in the form of relations among inputs and outputs of multiple executions, to help verify the correctness of a program. This paper presents new empirical evidence to support this approach, which has been used to alleviate the oracle problem in various applications and to enhance several software analysis and testing techniques. It has been observed that identification of a sufficient number of appropriate metamorphic relations for testing, even by inexperienced testers, was possible with a very small amount of training. Furthermore, the cost-effectiveness of the approach could be enhanced through the use of more diverse metamorphic relations. The empirical studies presented in this paper clearly show that a small number of diverse metamorphic relations, even those identified in an ad hoc manner, had a similar fault-detection capability to a test oracle, and could thus effectively help alleviate the oracle problem

Understanding the Clean Interface between Covalent Si and Ionic Al2O3

The atomic and electronic structures of the (001)-Si/(001)-gamma-Al2O3 heterointerface are investigated by first principles total energy calculations combined with a newly developed "modified basin-hopping" method. It is found that all interface Si atoms are fourfold coordinated due to the formation of Si-O and unexpected covalent Si-Al bonds in the new abrupt interface model. And the interface has perfect electronic properties in that the unpassivated interface has a large LDA band gap and no gap levels. These results show that it is possible to have clean semiconductor-oxide interfaces

The mechanism of the polarization dependence of the optical transmission in subwavelength metal hole arrays

We investigate the mechanism of extraordinary optical transmission in subwave-length metal hole arrays. Experimental results for the arrays consisting of square or rectangle holes are well explained about the dependence of transmission strength on the polarization direction of the incident light. This polarization dependence occurs in each single-hole. For a hole array, there is in addition an interplay between the adjacent holes which is caused by the transverse magnetic field of surface plasmon polariton on the metal film surfaces. Based on the detailed study of a single-hole and two-hole structures, a simple method to calculate the total tranmissivity of hole arrays is proposed.Comment: 34 pages, 7 figure

Method of determining cosmological parameter ranges with samples of candles with an intrinsic distribution

In this paper, the effect of the intrinsic distribution of cosmological candles is investigated. We find that, in the case of a narrow distribution, the deviation of the observed modulus of sources from the expected central value could be estimated within a ceratin range. We thus introduce a lower and upper limits of $\chi ^{2}$, $\chi_{\min}^{2}$ and $\chi_{\max}^{2}$, to estimate cosmological parameters by applying the conventional minimizing $\chi ^{2}$ method. We apply this method to a gamma-ray burst (GRB) sample as well as to a combined sample including this GRB sample and an SN Ia sample. Our analysis shows that: a) in the case of assuming an intrinsic distribution of candles of the GRB sample, the effect of the distribution is obvious and should not be neglected; b) taking into account this effect would lead to a poorer constraint of the cosmological parameter ranges. The analysis suggests that in the attempt of constraining the cosmological model with current GRB samples, the results tend to be worse than what previously thought if the mentioned intrinsic distribution does exist.Comment: 6 pages,4 figures,1 tables.Data updated. Main conclusion unchange

Experimental Long-Distance Decoy-State Quantum Key Distribution Based On Polarization Encoding

We demonstrate the decoy-state quantum key distribution (QKD) with one-way quantum communication in polarization space over 102km. Further, we simplify the experimental setup and use only one detector to implement the one-way decoy-state QKD over 75km, with the advantage to overcome the security loopholes due to the efficiency mismatch of detectors. Our experimental implementation can really offer the unconditionally secure final keys. We use 3 different intensities of 0, 0.2 and 0.6 for the pulses of source in our experiment. In order to eliminate the influences of polarization mode dispersion in the long-distance single-mode optical fiber, an automatic polarization compensation system is utilized to implement the active compensation.Comment: 4 pages,3 figure

Electric fields and valence band offsets at strained [111] heterojunctions

[111] ordered common atom strained layer superlattices (in particular the common anion GaSb/InSb system and the common cation InAs/InSb system) are investigated using the ab initio full potential linearized augmented plane wave (FLAPW) method. We have focused our attention on the potential line-up at the two sides of the homopolar isovalent heterojunctions considered, and in particular on its dependence on the strain conditions and on the strain induced electric fields. We propose a procedure to locate the interface plane where the band alignment could be evaluated; furthermore, we suggest that the polarization charges, due to piezoelectric effects, are approximately confined to a narrow region close to the interface and do not affect the potential discontinuity. We find that the interface contribution to the valence band offset is substantially unaffected by strain conditions, whereas the total band line-up is highly tunable, as a function of the strain conditions. Finally, we compare our results with those obtained for [001] heterojunctions.Comment: 18 pages, Latex-file, to appear in Phys.Rev.

GROUND FILTERING OF CO-REGISTERED MOBILE AND STATIONARY LASER SCANS BY USING SUPERPOINTS IN RANSAC PLANES

Ground filtering is an important tool for many applications. The high variability of landscapes makes it necessary to perform its computation with 3D points as the only input, that is, with as few as possible algorithm parameters and without any training data. In the case of terrestrial laser scans, an additional challenge comes from a highly inhomogeneous point density. The SiRP algorithm on ground filtering, relying on intermediate validating superpixels as ground or non-ground, was previously developed for airborne point clouds. We consider a dataset acquired by a mobile mapping system mounted on a car, which was extended by additional stationary laser scans. The registration algorithm is based on hierarchical merging. Afterwards, SiRP was applied to both uni-modal and multi-modal point clouds. Impressive qualitative and quantitative classification results with around 97 % on overall accuracy were obtained and discussed